Professor Sid Watkins on Ayrton Senna's fatal crash: “When they were released from behind the safety car, Senna went off very, very fast followed by Schumacher and when they completed the first racing lap, Senna’s car went past mine. It was very, very unstable and the back end of the car was stepping out a great deal and I had the premonition that there was going to be a big accident."

"As you can see from the photos, we have glorious weather here in Bahrain. Not a cloud in the sky and an air temperature of 34°C. But it's a very pleasant dry heat, rather than the humid heat we had in Malaysia. Mind you, it will still be hard work for the drivers in the cockpit."

"Mosley's letter offers the teams a final chance to make a case for adjusting the budget cap prior to the anticipated ratification of the technical and financial regulations at the next FIA World Council meeting on April 29. The budget cap is optional, although teams who opt not to adopt it will work to more restrictive technical rules."

If Gascoyne has any magic in him, it takes him forever to exhibit his talent. When he joined Toyota, after about 8months of round the clock wind tunnel work. I only saw 1fin on the car. Now that fins are banned, whats he going to put on the car :-)

Come on Nelson, its only a new diffuser, it’s not magical and it’s not going to bless you with your fathers talent.
He’s obviousley trying to get some positive sound bites out, but I think we will see his replacement after Barca, I feel sorry for him because Renault are putting everything into an Alonsos push.

Peter, Gascoyne is not often a team player. Since he arrived at ForceIndia there had been friction between him and the effective manager of the team.
Talent is just one aspect of overall skill. The question you should be asking is why Toyota and then ForceIndia were willing to part with him.

I’m going to play the Devil’s Advocate here and suggest that relative to what he has to work with, Nelson Piquet is actually doing a pretty good job this season, dismal as it has been for him. Consider he following:

– Firstly, the Renault R29 was probably good for little more than scrap to begin with. It’s not a particularly good car, and Alonso has proven that it needs a fuel tank as dry as a martini and diffuser on the rear to make it anything resembling competitive.

– Secondly, Renault’s management are really killing his potential to develop whatever talent he has. Briatore is notorious for favouring Alonso; sometimes I think Piquet is only really there so that Renault have two cars on the grid. If he were given the option of only running one car, you can bet Briatore would drop Piquet without a second thought. If anybody needs to go from Renault, it’s Briatore.

– Thirdly, we haven’t actually had what one might call a “normal” season so far. In the first race, everyone was unsure about how the new cars and regulations would do under race conditions. In Sepang the race was cut short, and in Shanghai the weather was once again at odds with the drivers. Bahrain will be the first event with some degree of normality to it.

– Fourthly, any new developments for the car have gone onto Alonso’s machine. He’s run KERS when Piquet hasn’t even seen it yet (even if KERS is proving to be a white elephant, I still have a valid point). When the diffuser was flown in for China, it went onto Alonso’s can, and I don’t think Renault have even built a second one for Piquet.

– Finally, Briatore has come out and said he needs to support Piquet. Coming off the back of his scathing comments post-China, this leads me to believe that the Powers That Be at Renault – the ones who write the cheques – have told Briatore to start treating Piquet like a actual driver, much like the FIA telling Andrea Moda to lift their game in 1992.

In short, I think that Piquet made a bad move in joining Renault. I think anyone who did – be it Grosjean or someone else – would be in the same situation. I’m pretty sure the other drivers avoid Renault by any means necessaary when it comes to the silly season, because they know they’ll be ignored in the face of Fernando Alonso. Look at Button, who declined to join the team (though I suspect by then he knew the Team To Be Known As Brawn were on to something good). Briatore is the ONLY team principal who uses the system of favouring one driver exclusively; everyone else favours both drivers equally until one is no longer in the figth for the championship or is a mathematical outsider, as Alonso found out to his detriment in 2007. Briatore is the root of most of the political problems in Formula One, be it denying new drivers their chance by ignoring them, favouring the drivers he manages over others who may be more talented, conditioning drivers in a certain way that they clash with other team principals when they change teams, or doing a dummy spit because he isn’t winning the way he did in China.

The only time I can ever recall Braitore being happy was between 2005 and 2006. Every other time there has always been something that he thinks means the sport is in deep, deep ****. But once Renault is out front, there’s no longer any danger. That, by proxy, means he’s the most important man in the sport, or so he’d like to think. There’s been the suggestion that Renault will withdraw at the end of 2009, and contrary to what Flav believes, the sport won’t collapse. In fact, I think everyone would be better off without him.

Get rid of Briatore, I say, and lt Piquet have a team principal who will let him have his chance.

Briatore is sounding like a sad old man pretty much all the time these days. I don’t follow football but most of my mates do and they can’t believe what tosser this guy is (he has some ownership of an English football team.)

Remember not only are the newest, fastest development bits going to go into Alonso’s car first but also he has the best single crew Renault can put together. No matter how equal a team tries to be, they will always put their best complete packages forward. That means the personnel behind the scenes too. This is not exactly a Senna/Prost team where assigning spots would be a big dilemma.

Yeah flav owns queens park rangers fc, i read or heard somehwere that at home games he was in the changing rooms before game talking to the players (pretty sure he knows nothing about proffessional football)

Back to piquet though…..In my honest opinion i just think he isnt cut out for f1, saome people are like that. Jan Magnusson was another, rapid in the junior formulae but in f1 he was crap really. I dont think that it helps that renault seem to just thorw him in the other car and let him get on with it mind. Id like to see him in a different car, because Alonso is making him look crap.

Briatore…..Come 05 when alonso won a few races i think briatore had a bit of de ja vue….It reminded him of the days when schumacher raced at bennetton and flav and the team heavily favoured him. Seeing that alonso had considerable talent he repeated this feat. In them years 05 & 06 it was probably the right approach, fisichella wasnt going to beat him so focusing the effort on alonso’s tittle bid made sense. However if you look at ferrari’s example, ok schumacher was number 1 driver and generally had to finnish in front if circumstances allowed it. But they didnt completley ignore the 2nd driver because having the 2nd driver doing well helps the team in the constructors championship and helps the number 1 driver because it takes points of his rivals.

Now these things are good in season when you have a car competing for race wins and championships, but last year and this year, renault are not going to be going for the world tittle are they?? So the whole favouring alonso completley over piquet doesnt make any real sense in my opinion